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Tea with David

The servant showed David Wakefield onto the terrace, where Eleanor Haverford waited.

The visit to the child in the nursery upstairs had calmed him, somewhat; his anger was banked though the duchess had no doubt it still burned under the controlled exterior.

“How did you find Antonia?” she asked, indicating that he should take the chair beside her.

“Worried about her mother.” He jerked as if he would leap to his feet again, but controlled the impulse. “What are you planning to do with her? Keep her here?”

Eleanor had already decided that the little girl would be better with her aunt, and would persuade David to that point of view if he did not agree, but he needed to hear that she acknowledged his claim. “It is not up to me, David. I am just a family friend. You and her aunt must make this decision, since her mother is… unavailable.”

He relaxed, fractionally, but at the last word he let out a huff of air that sounded almost like a sob. “Unavailable,” he repeated, bitterly.

“You intend to go after her, I assume.” Eleanor made it a statement, not a question. He had declared his intention an hour ago, when he had burst in unannounced, demanding to see his lover’s daughter and swearing vengeance on the Marquis of Aldridge.

“Yes. Yes, of course. I already have men on the docks trying to find the ship’s destination. Sailors talk. If the captain told his men, someone will know.”

“What can we do to help?” Eleanor handed David a cup of tea and began piling a plate with small savouries. He would need food and drink, and was unlikely to stop again today to find them.

“Your family has helped quite enough,” David snapped, then lowered his hazel eyes, so like those of her two sons, his half-brothers. “I beg your pardon, Your Grace. That was uncalled for.”

“You are upset, David. I am sure that Aldridge did not intend–”

David’s manners were usually impeccable, and it was a measure of his distress that he interrupted her. “Of course he didn’t. He would never deliberately put Gren in danger. Or Prue either, I suppose. I don’t blame him for choosing the wrong ship for your younger son’s journey. I blame him for suggesting that Prue left of her own accord.”

That raised Eleanor’s eyebrows. “Of her own… he thought it was an elopement?”

“Yes. He had the nerve to suggest Gren has legitimacy and wealth and so…”

“For an intelligent boy, my son Aldridge can occasionally be extremely stupid. No wonder you are cross with him.”

That, as she had hoped, fetched an amused quirk of the lips, though the smile did not reach his worried eyes.

David finished his tea, and stood to leave. “I’ll go after Prue, Your Grace, and Gren, too. Will you send Antonia to her aunt? She is at home there, and the wait will be easier for her. I’ll send word as soon as I can; as soon as I know whether they are…”

He trailed off, and the words he did not say hung between them. Dead or alive. Murdered or merely kidnapped.

In the months to come, Eleanor clung to the promise her husband’s base-born son had made her. No news at all was surely better than certain news of the deaths of her younger son and the young woman she had come to love almost as a daughter. But where were they, and had David found them?

This scene doesn’t appear in Concealed in Shadow, but it clearly happened. Here’s where it fits. After the end of Revealed in Mist, David arrives in London and finds that Prue has been missing for over a week and that the Marquis of Aldridge, heir to the Duke of Haverford, was the last person to see her. He questions Aldridge, to find that Prue had gone down to the wharves to farewell Lord Jonathan Grenford, Aldridge’s younger brother. Aldridge has his own jaundiced view of the couple’s disappearance. David ends up punching the man and storming off. It was inevitable that, after initiating the investigation into the ship on which Gren and Prue left, he’d head to Haverford House where Prue had left her daughter visiting for the day with the Duchess of Haverford.

I’m currently researching and writing character outlines and heroes’ journeys for Concealed in Shadow.

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The detainees of Verdun

He says: “Madame, permittez me, to pay my profound esteem to your engaging person! & to seal on your divine Lips my everlasting attachment!!!” A cynical and sensual grin indicates the character of his advances. She smiles with coy complacency, saying, “Monsieur, you are truly a well-bred Gentleman! – & tho’ you make me blush, yet, you Kiss so delicately, that I cannot refuse you; tho’ I was sure you would Deceive me again!!!” Above their heads are oval bust portraits of Napoleon (left) and George III (right), the two men extending their arms as if to shake hands; the King scowls, Napoleon regards him with brooding suspicion. The frames are bordered by olive branches and palm-branches. 1 January 1803

Even before the Peace of Amiens was officially signed in March 1802, people from England came flooding back into France. The country had been closed to them for ten years. Many had property in France they wanted to check on, others came as tourists or on business or to visit family.

Most came and went during the eighteen months of the peace. Some were trapped when, on 23 May 1803, Napoleon signed an edict to detain every male Briton between the ages of 16 and 60. The orders were carried out quickly and efficiently. At first, women and children were allowed to go, but soon every Briton, of whatever age, male and female (even British spouses of French citizens), found themselves prisoners of France for the next 11 years.

At first, they could remain where they were, but soon Napoleon ordered them to various cities, notably Verdun.

It was a sizeable town a long way from the sea, and the influx of (usually) wealthy English was welcomed. John Goldsworth Alger, in his 1904 account of the detentions, says a French newspaper compared the detainees to sheep enclosed in a fold to manure the soil.

The English were able to hire lodgings (at extortionate prices) and live much as normal, though if they could not afford living costs, or if they misbehaved in any way, they were liable to be imprisoned.

Verdun was a walled town, and within its walls the detainees lived much as they would have lived in London, though paying double the normal price for food and everything else.

Some behaved badly. One was sent to prison for seducing a townsman’s wife. Another struck a gendarme who reprimanded him for behaving indecently with his French mistress at the theatre. Still more gambled, insulted the French, and fought with the townspeople and one another.

Others occupied themselves with hobbies or work, or social activities, or raising subscriptions with which the wealthier detainees sought to help the poor.

General Virion was in charge of the detainees and the prisoners of war who soon joined them. The detainees made many complaints about his extortionate practices. One man, a regular social contact of the General, reported he had leave to go out into the country on a day that all leave was recalled. He was heading back into the town when two gendarmes stopped him and told him the order didn’t apply to him. Later, when he did return, he was arrested and faced with a choice: pay a huge fine or be imprisoned.

The general was summoned to Paris in 1810 to explain himself to a commission appointed by Napoleon, but shot himself before the investigation could begin. His successor was likewise asked to explain himself, but blamed all extortion on a subordinate. This man also shot himself, leaving a note that said he was innocent, but — having been blamed by the boss — he could not face dishonour.

I’m finding some wonderful stories and hints of stories about people caught up in the detentions; not just in Verdun but in other towns. As I continue to research for Concealed in Shadow, I’ll share some here.

 

 

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Festivals on WIP Wednesday

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like its predecessor in the Golden Redepenning Series, part of  A Raging Madness takes place against a backdrop of every day village life. In early 19th Century England, the changes of the season and the festivals of the church gave the year a rhythm and a pattern, celebrated with feasts and fasts, particular traditions and practices, and foods specific to the time of year and often the place.

This week’s excerpt is about Easter in the Lincolnshire Wolds, where pride of place is given to Tansy Pudding. Do you have special celebrations in your books? Weddings? Birthdays? Feasts? Or perhaps a superstition or special practice? Share it with us in the comments.

Amy agreed that she was looking forward to the afternoon’s egg-rolling. “Grandmama says I shall soon be too old for such things, but I plan to enjoy it while I may.” She screwed up her nose at her Grandmother Cunningham’s opinion.

“Why, Miss Cunningham, then you shall be old enough for other traditions. Do you know, in Lincolnshire they say if you wait in the church porch on St Mark’s Eve, at midnight you will be passed by those who will be married during the year? I daresay half the maidens of the parish shall be there next Sunday evening, all trying to be silent.”

“In Gloucestershire, we try that kind of fortune-telling on All Hallow’s Eve,” Susan told him. “I can remember bobbing for apples, and then putting the apple I caught under my pillow so that I would dream of my future husband.”

“And did you, Mama?” Amy asked.

Susan demurred and turned the subject to putting bride cake under the pillow for the sake of the dream. Ella told the story she had heard from her mother about the Dumb Cake made on St Mark’s Eve in February. Two friends, working in silence, would mix and bake the cake, then break it in half, eat it, and walk backwards up the stairs to bed. If they had managed the whole process in silence, they would see a vision of their future husband below them on the stairs.

Mr Morris had yet another story, and even Mr Smithers joined in with a piece of folklore from Cheshire.

The dinner proceeded so merrily that the triumphal entry of the Tansy Pudding caught Ella by surprise. It looked magnificent in its deep pie dish, with its rich layer of golden orange preserve, and Mrs Broadley stood by beaming as Alex served Amy, who sat between him and Ella, and passed the plate on for Mr Morris to serve Susan.

As the men then served themselves, a maid put a much smaller dish—a little blue bowl—in front of Ella. She picked up a mouthful on her spoon and had it almost to her lips when Mrs Broadley gave a wordless shout and darted forward to dash it from Ella’s hands.

Conversation, movement, everything stopped. Mrs Broadley broke the silence. “I am so sorry, my lady. I don’t know how it happened, but you were meant to get the red bowl. Betty, you fool. I told you the bowl on the dresser. I used the blue dishes for the leftover mix from the main pudding, my lady. Oh I am that upset. You silly girl, Betty.”

The maid protested that she’d bought the only dish on the dresser, everything else for the Viscount’s table being lined up on the servery, and Ella assured Mrs Broadley that no harm had been done, thanks to the housekeeper’s quick action.

It soured the end of the dinner, though Alex sent Mrs Broadley off to the kitchen to investigate. Ella and Alex both tried to return the conversation to folklore, passing the incident off as a foolish mixup, but when griping pains hit first Amy, then Mr Morris, then all of those who had eaten the pudding, the mistake took on a much more sinister cast.

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Tea with Susan


Unrelieved black suits few women, but Susan Cunningham is one of those whose beauty it enhances, her guinea-gold hair glowing under the black lace that covered it, her porcelain skin looking whiter by contrast.

“I sent my condolences when I heard, Susan, but may I say in person how sorry I was to hear that your husband’s ship was lost?” the Duchess of Haverford says, as she takes the younger woman’s hand and kisses her cheek.

“I still do not believe it,” Susan answers, taking her seat once the duchess does. “I keep expecting to get another letter from him, or have some false friend commiserate about his misbehaviour in some foreign port or see him walk in the door, upset the children, and waltz back out to find someone to get drunk with.”

She flushes. “Oh dear. I have no idea why I just said that, Aunt Eleanor.”

“Because you know that I knew the Captain,” the duchess says dryly, “and because you are tired of pretending to agree with all those false comforters that want only to sing his virtues.”

“His mother has him fitted for a halo,” Susan agrees, “but then, she never could see a fault in him.”

“Which is undoubtedly why he had so many.” Her Grace’s tone is drier still.

“He had virtues too, Aunt Eleanor. And I find I miss him far more than I expected. It is odd. He was seldom home, and that was just how I like it after we grew so far apart. But now that he will never come home again, I miss him.”

 

 

 

Today’s visitor appears in Farewell to Kindness and A Raging Madness as a support character. She is Rede’s cousin and Alex’s sister. She will be the heroine of The Realm of Silence, which is the next book in the Golden Redepennings series. She was not looking for a second husband. But I have my eye on her.

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Surprises on WIP Wednesday

I’m on the home straight with A Raging Madness. Ten more scenes, I think, and the mystery will unravel, but not before Alex and Ella have to decide what matters to them most.

They have several more surprises in store;  the book has been a series of them, mostly nasty. They’re almost due a nice one. Almost. Meanwhile, one of the latest incidents has provided today’s excerpt.

As always, I invite you to post an excerpt on the day’s theme in the comments. Surprises. Of any kind: exciting, unpleasant, spoken or in action. Mine is snakes.

“No thank you, Miller. I have had sufficient to drink. Indeed, you can put the rest of this into the slop bucket.” Ella handed her cup to Miller.
“But you must have your chocolate, my lady. I made it especially for you.”
Ella looked at the cup, and almost picked it up. Whether it was her irritation with the maid’s insistence or her revulsion at the thought of any more liquid, she decided against it.
“No, Miller. I thank you for making it, but I will not drink it this afternoon. In fact, please do not make it unless I ask for it.”
For a moment, she thought the maid would argue some more, but Miller pressed her lips together and turned away to take the remains of the tea into the bedroom.
“Amy, I will have my wash now, darling. And you should find your room and freshen up from your journey.”
Ella was about to follow Miller when the maid screamed.
*****
“Your Hounslow has won my admiration, Susan,” Alex told his sister over dinner after the fuss was all over. Hounslow had joined Jonno and Alex in recapturing the snakes Miller had released when she knocked the slop bucket over in her shock at its contents.
He was now directing an inch by inch search of the room to make sure they’d not missed any of the creatures, and proposed to spread the search to the whole house to prevent further nasty surprises. After he finished supervising the dinner service to his new employers and their guests.
Adders! They were shy creatures, on the whole, slithering away from an encounter with human beings. But, as Miller discovered, they would bite if they saw no alternative, such as if they were woken from hibernation as these were, disturbed with no way out except through a person.
The maid had been put to bed, her bite washed and Miller herself dosed with elderberry wine. Apart from some pain and swelling, she had not yet evinced symptoms of severe poisoning, but adder venom was not to be trivialised. Ella had set another maid to watch Miller, with a list of symptoms of which to beware.
The whole household was on alert to regard all receptacles with caution. Hounslow, however, had taken firm charge of incipient hysteria amongst the maids, and had fostered a competition in bravery amongst the footmen, grooms, and carpenters by suggesting the maids could depend on their protection.
“But how could the snakes have got there, Uncle Alex?” Amy asked.
Alex had just finished a frustrating and unproductive hour questioning servants and carpenters about who had been into the room, or seen carry the bucket or a bag that could have contained snakes. “I don’t yet know, Amy, but I intend to find out. Meanwhile, Jonno has gone into the village to see if he can find anyone who has recently uncovered a nest of the pests, and to borrow a couple of dogs to help search the house.”

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Tea with Prue Virtue

Today’s post is an excerpt from my latest novel, Revealed in Mist. (Click on the link to read the blurb and find buy links.)

Prue hesitated in the street outside her next destination. Callers needed to present their card at the gate, be escorted to the front door and delivered to the butler, then wait to be announced. On most days of the week, uninvited guests below a certain rank in society would have difficulty making it past the first obstacle, but on Thursday afternoons, the Duchess of Haverford was ‘at home’ to petitioners.

Past encounters had always been initiated by Her Grace. A scented note would arrive by footman, and Prue would obey the summons and receive the duchess’s commission. Though she was always gracious, never, by word or deed, had Her Grace indicated that she and Prue had any closer relationship than employer and agent.

The entrance and public rooms of Haverford House were designed to impress lesser mortals with the greatness of the family—and their own lesser status. Prue was ushered to a room just off the lofty entrance hall. Small by Haverford standards, this waiting area nonetheless dwarfed the people waiting to see the duchess.

Two women, one middle-aged and the other a copy some twenty years younger, nervously perched on two of the ladder-backed chairs lining one wall. Next to them, but several chairs along, a lean young man with an anxious frown pretended to read some papers, shuffling them frequently, peering over the tops of his spectacles at the door to the next room. Two men strolled slowly along the wall, examining the large paintings and conversing in low whispers. A lone woman walked back and forth before the small window, hushing the baby fretting on her shoulder.

Prue took a seat and prepared for a wait. She would not tremble. She had nothing to fear. Both Tolliver and David said so, and Aldridge, too. But how she wished the waiting was over.

It seemed a long time but was only a few minutes, before a servant hurried in and approached her.

“Miss Virtue? Her Grace will see you now.”

Prue gave the other occupants an apologetic nod and followed the servant.

The duchess received her in a pretty parlour, somehow cosy despite its grand scale. Prue curtseyed to her and the woman with her. Were all petitioners waved to a seat on an elegant sofa facing Her Grace? Addressed as ‘my dear’? Asked if they should care for a cup of tea?

“Miss Virtue takes her tea black, with a slice of lemon,” the duchess told her companion. Or was the woman her secretary?

“Miss Virtue, my companion, Miss Grant. Miss Grant, Miss Virtue has been of great service to me and to those I love. I am always at home to her.”

Was Miss Grant one of the army of relatives for whom Her Grace had found employment, or perhaps one of the dozens of noble godchildren she sponsored? The young woman did not have the look of either Aldridge or his brother, nor of their parents. Prue murmured a greeting.

“I was not expecting you, Miss Virtue, was I? Is anything wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong, Your Grace. I just… I have some questions, Ma’am.”

“You should have sent a note, my dear. I will always take time to see you. I was happy to give a good report of you to my friend Lady Georgiana, of course.” As she spoke, the duchess took the tea cup from Miss Grant and passed it to her.

“Your Grace, I would like to speak with you alone, if I may. I beg your pardon, Miss Grant. I do not mean to be discourteous.”

The duchess stopped her own cup partway to her lips and put it carefully back into the saucer, examining Prue’s face carefully.

When she spoke, it was to Miss Grant. “Celia, my dear, will you let those waiting know that I will be delayed…” she consulted her lapel watch, “…thirty-five minutes, but I will see them all today? Perhaps you could arrange refreshments for them? Return on the half hour, please. That is all the time I can spare, Miss Virtue. If you need longer, I will ask you to wait or return another day.”

Prue shook her head. “The time will be ample, Ma’am. Thank you.”

As Miss Grant left the room, Prue was silent, collecting her thoughts. The duchess waited.

“You knew. You have known all along.” Prue shifted uneasily. She had not intended to sound accusing.

The duchess inclined her head in agreement, her face showing nothing but calm.

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Weddings on WIP Wednesday

Weddings are a given in what I write. Sooner or later. Sometimes after the story ends, and sometimes before it begins, but weddings. So today I’m looking for you to post me an excerpt about a wedding. It doesn’t have to show the actual wedding of your hero and heroine, though it could. It could be weddings remembered, weddings planned for, weddings attended.

My two come from A Raging Madness. The first is Ella remembering her first wedding, what brought it about, and what her marriage was like.

“I don’t really remember the first time. Just disjointed bits. I was still fogged by the drug the second time, in the morning, when Dadda came. I remember him shouting, and Gervase laughing, and then lots of people. Faces. Eyes. Jeering.”

Like the other night. Alex would kill that bitch Patrice, and Farnham, and the Blaxtons. And then he would go to Cheshire and dig Melville up and bury him again in a pigpen. No. A midden. No, both. Every midden and pigpen in the county, till even Judgement Day couldn’t find all the pieces to put him back together again.

Ella snuggled into him again, putting a comforting hand on the side of his face. “It is alright, Alex. It was a long time ago. Dadda had a bad seizure right there in the tent, and I think the Colonel wanted to make sure I was protected, for he told Gervase he had a choice between wedding me or being shot. And he sent for the chaplain to perform the ceremony there and then.

It was not so bad. Dadda recovered, and he and the Colonel made Gervase look after me.”

Except for the constant sneering, the neglect, the disdain. Physical abuse, too, mostly where it did not show, but Alex had heard Ella explain away more than one bruise as a trip or a bump, darting a cautious glance at Melville all the while. And nightly rapes. And a camp full of men who should have been honoured to protect her and who instead abandoned her to her abuser.

The second is her wedding day to Alex. People have been told that the pair have been married for weeks, but those in the know have organised a celebration for when the couple return from the church.

When they entered the house, the nursery and schoolroom party were waiting to bombard them with ribbons and rice, and streamers cut from paper, and to escort them to the large parlour, where the adults waited under a big decorated sign with somewhat tipsy capitals that read, ‘Lord and Lady Renshaw’. Tea trolleys laden with sandwiches, pastries, cakes, and other tasty treats jaded it a party lunch, and they were the guests of honour.

“I told Anne you had not had a proper wedding celebration, dear Ella,” Susan said, “since you married under such hurried circumstances, so today is a party for you and Alex.”

“You must have wondered at it,” the countess commented, “that I sent you on such an errand when this is your first day in our home, but Susan and I plotted this last night, and it was her part to keep you out of the way till we were ready. We are so happy for you and Alex.”

The women carried Ella off to one side of the room, and the menfolk surrounded Alex and pressed a glass of wine into his hand.

“Your wife will be fine,” Alex’s brother Rick reassured him. “Our women just want to know her. They have heard fine praise from Susan.

“You’ve spoiled our fun a little,” Rede complained, “having the party eight weeks after the wedding. Now would be our chance to tell you everything that might go wrong on the wedding night.”

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A problem to solve in WIP Wednesday

I like to give my hero and heroine something to do together, and in my novels, at least, the problem they have to solve tends to be as intractable as possible. In Farewell to Kindness, both hero and heroine have their own missions, and each has to choose between their goal and the feelings between them. In A Baron for Becky, the men need to put aside their own desires for Becky to succeed—and even then, she is so broken it may not work. In Revealed in Mist, the two protagonists are working for different clients to solve the same mystery. And in A Raging Madness, I’ve upped the stakes.

In the extract below, Alex and Ella have just met after three years. Ella has broken into Alex’s hotel room and is begging for his help.

As always, I’m inviting you to post your own extract in the comments.

That she had taken opium in some form was beyond a doubt. The contracted pupils, the loss of appetite, the shaky hand, the restless shifting in her seat, all spoke to that.

Thanks to his injury, Alex had far too close and personal an experience of the symptoms to mistake them. The bruises on her jaw made him wonder how voluntary her drug taking was, but perhaps her keepers needed to drug her to keep her calm.

Sane or not, Alex hoped he would not need to hand her back to Braxton. Her fear might be irrational, but when she had stood at bay, begging for his help, he had been thrown back ten years. Not that she begged him then. But he left camp on a short mission, and to find Ella married and much changed, her fire banked; her joy extinguished. That time, he had ignored her plight, hardened his heart and left her to the fate she had engineered. And had suffered with her as the consequences quenched her vitality and sucked away the last of her childhood. Suffered, and been powerless to help.

“I have been drugged,” Ella said baldly. “Twice a day. For weeks now. They won’t tell me why. If I refuse, they force me.”

“‘They’ being Braxton and his wife?” Alex prompted.

“And Constance’s dresser.”

“Go on.” He was careful to show no disbelief, no surprise.

“I have been kept in my room. They locked the door. They took all my clothes, my shoes. I saw you out the window and so I came. Will you help me, Alex?”

“I can take you to the rector.” Even as he said it he remembered the plump little man greasing at Braxton’s elbow. Ella would find no help there.

“No!” Her rejection was instant and panicked. “He will give me back and they will send me to that place. No, Alex. You do not know what they plan for me.” She was weeping. Alex had seen her calm under cannon fire, dry-eyed at her father’s funeral, efficient and unemotional in the midst of the carnage of a hospital tent after a battle. He had never seen her weep.

He captured her hands, and kept his voice low and soothing. “I do not, Ella. Tell me.”

“I heard them last night. Edwin has found an asylum that will—Constance says I must be driven insane in truth. They rape the women there, Edwin says, and Constance says I am horribly resilient but even my sanity will not withstand multiple rapes.” The last word was whispered around a sob.

Alex kept his hands still with an effort. They wanted to punch and rend. No wonder she was panicked, but it could not be true, could it? Braxton was not a man Alex could like, but such wickedness? To his own sister-in-law?

“And you do not know why, Ella?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“The rector and the squire… They both believed Edwin and Constance. They came to see me, and I begged for their help, and they would not, Alex. They believed me insane. You do not believe me insane, do you, Alex?”

He did not know. That was the truth of it. His gut told him to destroy her persecutors and carry her off somewhere safe. His gut had never been reliable where Ella was concerned.

“Please, Alex.”

Alex made up his mind. “Ella, you will be safe here. Jonno and I will go and see what we can find out. Jonno, tell the innkeeper we are taking the room for another day. Then have my chaise brought round.”

He had not taken his eyes from Ella’s. She was calmer now, the tears drying on her cheeks. “You will not betray me? No, of course not. I trust you, Alex. I know we have not always agreed, but you will not betray me.”

“I will not betray you.” Though how he would keep his word if she was, in truth, insane, he did not know. Certainly, her story sounded crazy. But she had bruises on her jaw, and the rector had been lied to. And Alex did not like Braxton or his wife.

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Lawlessness and bounty hunting in the late-Georgian

The Bow Street Magistrates Court

(This is a repeat of an article I wrote for Caroline Warfield’s blog in June.)

Crime was a personal affair

Before 1829, our modern idea of a police force, and of one law for all, simply didn’t exist. In the pre 19th Century world, crime was a private matter, an offence against the victim. Doing something about it was up to the victim, though if the crime was a felony, the victim could expect help from constables and magistrates.

The offence might be settled between the disputants, or it might go to court to be judged by a magistrate or a jury. If the offence was against the Crown, the King was the offended party, and therefore one of the disputants, a convention we remember in the way we talk about a case as being Jones v Rex (King) or Brown v Regina (Queen). It was still a private affair, a personal interaction.

In our modern world, crime is seen as something that disturbs the public peace and disrupts the smooth running of society. Our police and the courts are charged with restoring social harmony. It is a very different model.

No one wanted a standing police force

The system worked very well in rural England in times of peace, provided you had a fair and reasonable local magistrate. People didn’t move around much. The local magistrate probably knew everyone, and could tell who needed a swift kick to the rear, who should be shipped off to the army and the navy, and who was unregenerate and nothing but trouble. And if he was in doubt, he had plenty of local people to talk to.

The idea of a central police force did not appeal to very many people. The middle and working classes saw such a force as a potential instrument of oppression. Royalty strongly disliked the idea of a standing army. And the gentry felt central control of policing would threaten their individual liberties and their place in local government.

Enter the bounty hunter

Eventually, as we know, the collapse of the traditional village social structure and the increasing mobility of the population made a police force inevitable, and three influential people made it palatable. Henry Fielding founded the Bow Street Runners. Patrick Colquhoun created a philosophy of policing that quieted people’s fears, and Sir Robert Peel established the first modern police force.

But before all of that, thief takers hunted across county lines to capture villains and bring them back to face justice.

Thief takers worked for a reward. Later, and on the other side of the Atlantic, they would be known as bounty hunters. The government, or perhaps a private individual, would post a reward, and off they’d go.

And they had an extremely disreputable reputation:

…the more corrupt thief-takers went further: they blackmailed criminals with threats of prosecution if they failed to pay protection money. Some even became “thief-makers” by encouraging gullible men to commit crimes, and then apprehending and prosecuting them in order to collect the reward. Such practices illustrate the point that not all “crimes” prosecuted at the Old Bailey had actually taken place; some prosecutions were malicious. [Old Bailey Online]

In the early 18th Century, Jonathan Wild, who styled himself ‘Thief taker General of England and Ireland’ was tried and convicted for receiving stolen goods after a decade of dominating the London criminal underworld.

No wonder my hero of Revealed in Mist, David Wakefield, wanted to be called an enquiry agent!

Revealed in Mist

Prue’s job is to uncover secrets, but she hides a few of her own. When she is framed for murder and cast into Newgate, her one-time lover comes to her rescue. Will revealing what she knows help in their hunt for blackmailers, traitors, and murderers? Or threaten all she holds dear?

Enquiry agent David solves problems for the ton, but will never be one of them. When his latest case includes his legitimate half-brothers as well as the lover who left him months ago, he finds the past and the circumstances of his birth difficult to ignore. Danger to Prue makes it impossible.

See my book page for more about the book, buy links, and the first two chapters.

Meet David

From within the protective camouflage of the gaggle of companions, Prudence Virtue watched her sometime partner and one-night-only lover drift around the banquet hall. No-one else saw him. Like the shadow he named himself, he skirted the edges of the pools of candle light, but even when his self-appointed duties moved him close to a group of guests, they overlooked him. None of the privileged, not even the host and hostess, noticed one extra footman.

He was very good. He had the walk, the submissive bend of the head, the lowered eyes. Even Prue—herself hiding as just one more brown-clad, unimpressive companion among a dozen others, waiting patiently in an alcove for the commands of an employer—did not detect him for her first half hour in the room.

But Prue’s body was wiser than her mind, and left her restless in his presence until her eyes caught so many times on a single footman among dozens she began to take notice. And she saw Shadow, for the first time since that disastrous morning five months before.

On the slim chance Shadow was not here for the same meeting as her, Prue stayed out of sight in the back of the alcove as the time for her to make her move approached. He had left the room several times in the hour she had been watching. With luck… Yes. There he went again. Now, if several of the dowagers would call at once… Done. Moving to where any of three or four ladies might be giving her instructions, she hurried away as if running an errand.

The key, the man she knew as Tolliver had taught her, was to fit into people’s preconceived ideas of the universe; to appear to be someone doing something they had an explanation for. The key was to blend into the background of the story they were telling themselves. ‘Don’t notice me. I’m just a companion running an errand,’ her behaviour said. And five minutes after she left, not one of them would remember what she looked like or where she went.

Revealed in Mist was released on 13 December.

 

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Backstory on WIP Wednesday

One of the tricky tasks an author has to manage is to tell those crucial bits of history a reader needs to sympathise with the hero or heroine, or despise the villain. But what to do? Hint and let the reader guess? Have the character explain themselves to another? Do a flashback in memory? Jump between present and past entirely?

All can work, or can be disastrous.

This week, on WIP Wednesday, I’m inviting you to post excerpts that carry your backstory. Mine is from A Raging Madness. Ella is telling Alex about her first marriage, which he had observed as a fellow officer.

He had seen the signs and ignored them, told himself that he had no right to interfere between husband and wife, told himself that she had made her bed and could lie in it. Arrogant, conceited pup. Twenty-one years old and full of his own pain. He hated that long-ago version of himself nearly as much as he hated Melville. Long ago? He had been believing lies against her as recently as two months ago.
“I often thought of sending him into the thick of battle, like David did to Uriah the Hittite. I should have done it.”
Ella, her eyes soft, reached up and kissed his chin. “Was I your Bathsheba then? I am flattered.”
“Always, Ella. My guilt made me cruel to you. I cannot tell you how sorry I am.”
Her eyes rounded and she shook her head. “No, Alex. You were always kind and polite. Distant. Disapproving sometimes. But I knew I could rely on you. I do not think I could have survived after Dadda died if not for you.” Her eyes filled with tears, and he bit back the self-recriminations. He did not deserve her praise, but nor was he selfish enough to deny the comfort her memories gave her in order to seek his own absolution.